The Role Social Media Plays on Music Popularity and Consumption
The pathways to fame and success in the music industry can be convoluted and seemingly random at times. Traditionally, a band would start locally, appealing to fans from wherever they’re based, maybe catch the attention of some other musicians and managers. Then eventually, they might get to meet the right person who convinces them to bring their band to a record label. The small band may sign a deal, and with full support from the label, turn the act into a bigger show, getting more attention through live shows and their albums, and in the ideal scenario, become popular and successful.
But nowadays major music labels are finding fewer and fewer unknown artists, and instead are pursuing bands with decent social media followings and presence. With the help of social media outlets, most specifically TikTok in the past few years, western labels are looking to the internet for the next big thing in the past few years. And one of the greatest ways to get noticed is to have a viral hit.
The Music landscape has rapidly changed in the past 15 years because of the internet and its increased use in daily life. With the emergence of Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, and now TikTok, music and media have gotten easier than ever before to share. Youtube has been home to thousands upon thousands of viral videos, easily starting careers and ending them with the power of the masses. Crazy sensations spread like wildfire, in a way where you can’t escape their influence almost anywhere online. Video trends such as the Harlem Shake, flash mobs, music videos like Gangnam style, What Does the Fox Say, and more every so often capture audiences across the globe to staggering influence. There are many factors that contribute to a viral video’s success, whether it’s from shock value, weirdness, or controversy. The similarity they all share is that they get people talking about whatever it is. They bring something new to the table, engage people because of its nature, and making more and more people talking about it at the same time.
Given the right planning and knowledge of social media environments and the right amount of luck, Artists can prepare themselves for successful careers and utilize their 5 seconds of fame to catapult their careers.
An extremely interesting case study on an artist effectively harnessing the momentum from their viral hit would be Lil Nas X. The story for Montero Lamar Hill started in late 2018. When uploading music to streaming services, artists have the option to tag their music as certain genres/metadata, so their music can be more effectively categorized with other similar music. When Lil Nas X released Old Town Road in December of 2018, he initially categorized the song as a country and Rap. In an interview with Rolling Stone, manager Danny Kang noted that gaining traction in the smaller genres can help boost you in the algorithm by using two genres, instead of directly competing with the Rap Genre. Then, through March of 2019, as the song was gaining a lot of traction, Billboard’s executives decided to remove Lil Nas’s song from the country charts. This sparked controversy since the decision seemed to be made because of the use of “trap-style” drums, which at that point was not that uncommon in the top-charting country songs or more problematic: because of his race. (see Meant to Be by Bebe Rexha and The Git Up by Blanco brown, both of which use these styles of drums at a similar time, and land within the ‘country’ genre) As the song rose in popularity, it eventually captured the attention of Billy Ray Cyrus, who hopped on as a feature/remix of the song that was released in April of 2020. Amid all of this excitement and press, the song saw immense popularity on TikTok, spawning dance trends, edits, and lip-syncs. The song’s combination of genres and catchy/memorable hook saw the continuous play and exposed the song to millions of young people heavily connected to internet culture. This all accumulated to the song peaking at number one on Billboard’s hot 100 for 19 consecutive weeks, despite its removal from the country charts.
But Lil Nas has had an extensive history of internet culture throughout his life. Years ago, he ran a somewhat popular Twitter Fan account, with multiple viral tweets. He got to get a very close understanding of how things on the internet spread, crafting clickbait-style posts, scenarios, and gimmicks/tricks to gain as much traction as possible in the internet culture. Though the account has since been suspended, its username @nasmiraj pops up all over the internet in connection to Lil Nas.
This practice is not too unlike the world of press releases for new music. When an artist has an upcoming release and wants to get on publications, they typically submit press releases ahead of the release date to bloggers and writers in an effort to get an article written about it. These writers then publish their reviews online to whatever magazine they’re a part of, and that shows more people your music. What Lil Nas is doing has the same end goal of more exposure but from a sneakier way, curating conversations and getting individuals to take notice of his music, a sort of guerilla marketing. In an interview with Time Magazine, Nas explained that he made over 50 meme videos utilizing his song, posted mainly to TikTok. It gained enough attention with other accounts with larger followings, resulting in them joining in on using the song.
Lil Nas’s genre-defying hit blasted him into the spotlight, where his extensive experience in social media culture informed his marketing the successful marketing of his music. We see him continuously engage with his online audience individually responding and posting multiple times daily to his over 6 million followers on Twitter, to promote and maintain his status on the popular music scene.
As I conveyed in my WP2 about the song-making process, it takes a long time for any song or project to be ready for release. To summarize, songs need to be written, recorded, produced, mixed, mastered, and marketed, involving dozens of individuals working together to make a great record. And this is considering the song is even good! What makes a successful release is the proper release and timing of it all.
One of my current favorite examples of a good album rollout is Isaiah Rashad’s upcoming album The House is Burning. After radio silence from the rapper in the past five years, Rashad released his first single in years, Lay Wit Yall, a hard-hitting and snappy track featuring the high-energy Duke Deuce on May 7th, 2021. From Chattanooga, Tennessee Rashad’s music had been on a hiatus following his critically acclaimed album The Sun’s Tirade, and fans have been hungry for more of his hazy production and grounded depictions of depression and addiction. Instantly, fans, including a new wave of people exposed to his music over the past few years exploded with excitement. Accompanied with a music video, interviews also confirming an album release date later that summer. The song landed on the Billboard hot 100 charts peaking at #21. One month later, after getting Rashad’s name back in circulation, Rashad released a teaser for his next song, Headshots on June 14th. The song dropped officially on June 18th, again, with a full music video. And most recently, his team dropped the third single off the album, Wat U Sed feat. Doechii and Kal Banx with another video on July 26th. At the same time, Rashad announced his upcoming tour.
While there are a lot of conflicting opinions on the efficacy and ‘evil nature’ of record labels, this album rollout would have never been as large as it is without the label’s support. The amount of money flowing into the marketing and production for Rashad is a price that no indie artist could ever afford. It’s true that some record labels are known for preying upon artist integrity and exploiting their work, but in this case, it’s clear that Rashad’s team is doing a massive service for his image and success for his new album. With multiple high production value music videos and invaluable experience and input from veterans in the music industry, Top Dawg Entertainment is doing everything in its power to make Isaiah commercially successful, and it’s clear that they understand the importance of social media and timed rollouts of projects, as to not saturate anyone with their product.
The biggest takeaway for myself and other upcoming artist’s releases is preparation. It’s likely the majority of all these projects have been filmed, edited, and primed for release months in advance. These music video shoots and album writing takes months of work to put together, and wouldn’t be able to drop every month as the rollout has been going. There’s also no way of knowing how long ago these videos have been recorded and edited. TDE’s executives obviously timed the release of this album with America’s transition out of lockdown from Covid, and the announcement of his tour along the cusp of his album release will ensure the most amount of attention from those who like the album. All that’s left to do at this point is wait until this coming Friday the 30th of July.
Now let’s take a look at an artist who has had commercial success but has fallen off in the spotlight. One of the best examples I look to is the rapper Desiigner. Initially thrust into fame with his song Panda being used for Kanye West’s seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo on Pt.2 of the Father Stretch My Hands Song. Panda went on to incredible sales numbers, released in December 2015, its first week peaking at number 1 on the US Billboard hot 100, and going 5x platinum as of 2021. This success is due in part to the high and unique energy of the track, along with the prominent featuring of the track on Kanye’s album in February of 2016. The song was a smash hit, which launched Desiigner’s career forward in December of 2015. However, the moment didn’t last. With a notable release called Timmy Turner following in the summer of 2016, the song didn’t quite live up to the hype of Panda. Around this point, people had been hearing Panda for a couple of months, and the overplaying and wild success of the song made all of Desiigner’s subsequent projects a mere comparison game to it.
Along with complications at his label G.O.O.D. Music and disagreements with his creative vision, he eventually left the label in 2019 to pursue his art independently.
A quick look at his Spotify streams really shows the vast difference between Panda and the rest of his releases.
While Desiigner may be everything but unsuccessful, his career has been slowed and somewhat tainted from the stark contrast in the reception following his successful hit Panda. He fell out of relevance, and no one in mainstream media seems to be following his next steps like they used to, though he has released two EP’s and has an upcoming studio album slated for release this year. None of which ever reached the billboard charts either. Without support from G.O.O.D. Music, Desiigner doesn’t have the same support that he used to, and will now be competing against his legacy. Though that’s not to say Desiigner’s song or career is without value. In an interview with the Independent, blogger Peter Robinson notes, “It’s a beautiful thing to have had a hit record; it’s almost a work of art in its own right. Whatever does or doesn’t happen afterwards doesn’t take away from that achievement. That said, being an artist having to spend years trying to recapture that must be difficult, and those in your support network might start to fall away.”
While Desiigner may have had a hit song that enraptured many, he didn’t offer much else to the public in terms of social media influence. He wasn’t terribly active on any social media accounts except for promoting his own music, and didn’t try and sell his persona well enough to be a lasting face or character.
Ex-USC student 24kgoldn aka Golden Landis Von Jones is a current example of an artist who rapidly entered mainstream popularity from TikTok with one specific song. His hit Mood, which now towers over other songs with over 1 billion streams on Spotify alone was the summer smash hit of 2020, thanks to its catchy and memorable hook, and relentless attention received on TikTok. Collaborating with another small artist Iann Dior, the two paired together elements of pop, punk, and hip hop into a widely appreciated hit, especially among Generation Z. This release was timed perfectly, with the quarantine fully affecting the whole nation, people became glued to their devices, and this wave’s soundtrack included Mood. The song later came out with a remix feature behemoths Justin Bieber and J Balvin later in November. In March of 2021, 24kgoldn released his debut studio album, resulting in a gold RIAA certification and 16 thousand units sold in the first week. Which is great numbers for a debut artist like himself, but nothing close to the magnitude of Mood.
Jones is an exciting new act with the potential for an even more successful career than what he’s already achieved. But his success hinges upon his ability to continue making music that can appeal to a wide audience. His career has been changed and is fully defined by Mood’s success, and there’s gonna be a lot of pressure for him to innovate. Only time will tell 24kgoldn’s future, but based upon his signing with Columbia Records, he now has resources similar to other artists on their rosters such as Harry Styles, Beyonce, and Tyler the Creator. But acknowledging the influence that TikTok and social media has played on his career, it’s clear that 24k will be crafting his next songs trying to capture that same energy, most likely catering the songwriting process to something that someone would want to make additional content to, similar to how artists back in the day would target radio placements and hits.
Many popular acts today start off as viral sensations that enter the mainstream seemingly overnight. With the world becoming more interconnected than ever, and the power that social media has firmly established in the last decade, it is also influencing how we consume all sorts of media, music included. There are lots of lessons for young up-and-coming talent to benefit from. While Lil Nas didn’t have the consistent release schedule that Isaiah had, he used his social media presence and personality to remain relevant. And acts like Desiigner fell off due to low staying power and not bringing anything that new to the table. But the biggest lesson of all is preparation, and careful planning to be able to ride any size wave of popularity to its fullest extent.
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